Oliver

The medication he is on is working and he hasn’t had any seizures in a while.

He had his EEG on Thursday which is no small deal for Oliver as he hates hats. At the lake this summer our biggest challenge was to put a hat on the kid. It went something like this. Hat goes on, hat comes off. Hat goes on, hat goes off. Hat goes on, hat gets tossed to the dog. Soggy hat goes on, hat comes off. Hat goes on, hat gets tossed out of the wagon. You get the idea. So the idea of a big hat with electrodes sticking out and then wrapped with gauze that Ollie could not take off was just about more than he could take. That being said, the tech did a good job of keeping Oliver pre-occupied with a Dora the Explorer DVD until Oliver was ready for a nap.

The medication has no side affects for Oliver except he goes to bed around 7:00 p.m. instead of 8:00 p.m. It makes me wonder why they don’t sell this stuff to all parents

Oliver meets with a specialist on Monday morning at Royal University Hospital. The appointment is at 10:00 a.m. and with the current parking situation over there, Wendy will need to be there at 7:00 a.m. For those of you who have not been there, the already inadequate parking lot is being totally redone and most of it has been unavailable all summer which means that parking is almost impossible to find. Because the hospital is located in the middle of the University of Saskatchewan, it isn’t as if there is a lot of parking available nearby. It has taken on average half an hour to find a spot. Of course the latest plan is to build a children’s hospital attached to RUH which is only going to make the problem worse.

This is somewhat related…

While the food used to be quite tasty in the RUH mall, it has gotten just horrible. When I was pastor of Lakeland Church, I used to spend time with the congregation in the hospital. I used to stop by early in the morning (and drop off a copy of the Star Phoenix) and then over supper time and give the family a bit of a break. I would eat supper with whoever was up there and it wasn’t bad. Since then it has gotten both expensive and horrible. Mark and I had a cold hot dog the other day while the doctors were looking at Oliver. I brought Wendy back a wrap that she could not eat. Does no one from the heath region eat that food? I know it’s salt reduced but all of the salt in the world isn’t helping this food.

Post navigation

5 thoughts on “Oliver”

1. Is there a bus that goes right to the front door of the hospital? Is htere some place on that bus line that is cheap/easy/free parking? And only a few stops away? Drive there and park and take the bus?

2. Or, how much is a cab ride? Not from home, which would be expensive? But, like the bus, from a cheap parking spot.

There are buses that go to the University of Saskatchewan campus but it would be a 15 minute walk from Place Riel. There are other spots on campus where one can occasionally find a spot but the U of S was designed for green spaces, not parking.

As for a cab, I think it would be about $20 each way which isn’t too bad but even short trips in Saskatoon are pretty expensive. Even from downtown it would cost over $10 which I don’t mind but really don’t feel like paying.

I am not a civil engineer but from watching the work that is happening there, it seems that the priority is cost instead of speed or patient convenience which I think is probably one of the core values of Canadian medicare

One more thought… while RUH was built in the 1950s, I think the parking garage was built in the late 70s or early 80s and hasn’t expanded with the hospital. Also a lot more health services are concentrated at RUH than they were a couple decades ago and even at full capacity, it can be horrible to park there. Parking isn’t sexy and with waiting lists being the top priority for people, I think infrastructure has been ignored.

I think Saskatoon Transit has some kind of “shared taxi” that costs about the same as a bus ride, and you might have a couple others with you for part of the trip?

I don’t know the rules, but here in the US, we have similar systems, and you need some form of ID – senior citizen, disabled, etc.

Since you are going to a hospital, that might be a sanctioned trip?

Comments are closed.

Welcome

This is a weblog about urban issues, technology, & culture published by Jordon Cooper since 2001. You can read about me and the site here and if you are looking for one of my columns in The StarPhoenix, you can find them here.